Restorative Environments

Undertaken by a team at the University of Virginia in conjunction with Happy City and Street Plans Collaborative, this study is one of the few covering the emerging field of “blue health.”

This autumn I become my own study in human adaptation, as I moved across the Atlantic to America to become the Professor in Design and Health at the Architecture School, University of Virginia.

The diagnosis of a potentially life threatening illness is catastrophic news for the individual and their family and friends.

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child?

The research implications, for the design of our neighbourhood communities, and the workplace, is huge.

I’ve been fortunate most of my life to have access to a garden or a nearby park … time to simply sit, contemplate and de-stress.

Arriving in a new city or town for the first time, I always map and locate its Botanic Gardens…

What is it about water features in our cities that seem to have such magnetic power over busy adults and boisterous children?

Over the last twenty years urban populations have been increasing by over three million people per week. That’s equivalent to creating a new Boston, every working day somewhere in the world.

Have you ever experienced that terrifying, totally paralysing, sense of being trapped in a place that you could see absolutely no escape from?

Universally we reward brand new glossy buildings and landscape – forgetting that these shiny new stars of the built environment don’t always hold up to their promise.

I have my own thinking route, the Meadows – a large green space in Edinburgh – which I jog around early morning or late evening and the birthplace of many an idea for my next seminar or research project.